talking about 12 Blue

the antithesis of water
She was was making a quilt of the river, it was the antithesis of science. Twelve feet long and eight feet wide, the covering for a giantess.
"But who would ever use it?" Samantha asked.
"Basketball players?" her mother offered. They laughed together.
"I need it long so I can get the flow I wish."
"So it's not for using, it's for flowing," Samantha said.
"Exactly," Lisle said, clapping with delight. She was a good daughter, the best.

They believed each other's stories and knew they were not minor characters.

"It's a quilt for swimmers then."
"Night swimmers," Lisle said, "We are all night swimmers."
Even the retrovirus, she thought.

Look Out
Look out. A lookout. Looking out for you. Her outlook.
What you did was you kept a picture of the space, whether a pool or the segment of water beyond the beach in front of your station, in your mind. You saw the whole thing but you saw it in motion and changing how it usually changed and you looked for changes that weren't the way it usually was, a still point where there had been movement, movement where there was stillness, something slipping away or flailing, a smooth silent space where moments before the water churned. You refreshed the picture every few seconds or so but without ever really looking. It was like sometimes how you can drive home and get there before you realize you don't remember driving there at all.
Look out. Her outlook.
Like the girlfriend who didn't know the sign for drowned.

Reviews/criticism of 12 Blue

http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/viewArticle/115/114

Postmodern Culture
Volume 8, Number 1, September 1997


http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall01/enns/enns.html

Don't Believe the Hype: Rereading Michael Joyce's Afternoon andTwelve Blue
by Anthony Enns (2001 in Currents in Electronic Literature)